It’s a term splashed around the SEO environment, but what is a PBN? This article explores the benefits and disadvantages of a PBN and will help to explain what it means. Let’s begin.

A PBN is a shorted term for Private Blog Network, just as SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. It already sounds ugly when you mention the term ‘network’, especially within the digital marketing world. After all, search engines are smart and don’t wish to witness unnatural manipulation from where search results are controlled by networks of owners.

Of course, private blog networks are to be avoided where possible, since they can send a negative signal to the likes of Google. However, that doesn’t mean that a PBN is necessarily bad. Ultimately, it means that one owner has a large number of websites, and if operated correctly, they can be very beneficial in a variety of areas.

Savvy Private Blog Network owners will make it hard or impossible for a person to detect that they are the king of the hierarchy of many websites. Bad owners will keep their network easily known – at least from a marketing thought.

Whilst Google isn’t able to install law, it can dictate which websites are indexed within its algorithm. Thus, PBNs are clearly an area that Google looks at, especially the poorly created websites – which many are. In fact, I believe this is really where the likes of Google home in on – poor websites that are created for the primary reason to sell links.

PBNs that offer true value are unlikely to be harmed by Google, since they have websites with the correct ingredients; great content that inform a user with the information they searched for. With technology evolving, we still see spun content containing links seeing positive results – something we at iNet Ventures never do, but we believe that it’s worth pointing it out.

As a website owner, you should adapt a natural approach to marketing. Since links play an important role in this, you should think carefully about the strategy you employ. Well crafted content providing a natural mention isn’t likely to cause any negativity in regards to how a search engine views your website – beneficial? Yes.

Imagine for one minute that you are one of the masterminds behind Google and its algorithm, you can hardly blame them from wanting to keep the search results indexed in a manner that isn’t easily manipulated. Once upon a time, website owners could easily manipulate search results by using quick methods from which had zero value for the user.

A PBN, if ran correctly, whilst complying with the policies of Google and such, can certainly have strong benefits, but many aren’t operated properly, and they often don’t comply with the terms outlined by Google. Thus, it can be dangerous to place content on a PBN.

Many marketing agencies work with PBN owners, or even have their very own network of websites. At iNet Ventures, we try to avoid outreaching to PBNs, since we know that they do come with risk. So there you go, that’s what a PBN (private blog network) is along with the uses, benefits and negatives that they deliver.